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The 13th amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery, was passed by the House of Representatives on January 31, 1865. It had already been passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864. This article goes into the history of amending the Constitution and finds that it often took years before all the states ratified new amendments. The writer assures the people in favor of the amendment that it would eventually be ratified, which happened in December, 1865. The Gazette & Courier was the newspaper in Greenfield, Massachusetts, from July 20, 1841 until June 24, 1932. Before 1841 the newspaper's name changed quite frequently, with Gazette a frequent part of the title.